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Gephardt rips Bush 'machismo' on IraqMissouri Democrat says U.S. in 'quicksand'
SAN FRANCISCO, California (CNN) -- Rep. Richard Gephardt, a Democratic presidential contender, on Tuesday attacked President Bush's Iraq policy, accusing him of disregarding diplomacy, antagonizing allies, cozying up to Saudi Arabia and undermining U.S. credibility with "chest-beating unilaterism." In a stinging broadside, the veteran Missouri lawmaker said the Bush-Cheney administration had succeeded in toppling Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, but is struggling to achieve peace in that country, where U.S. troops are subjected to almost daily guerrilla attacks. "When President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and declared victory in Iraq, I think he chose the wrong backdrop for his photo-op," Gephardt said in a transcript of the speech released by his campaign. "If you ask me, if he really wanted to show us the state of affairs, he should have landed on a patch of quicksand." Gephardt, who delivered his speech before the San Francisco Bar Association, was referring to Bush's May 1 speech on an aircraft carrier of the coast of California in which he declared major combat was over in Iraq. Since then, U.S. forces have come under sometimes deadly attacks, and criticism of the Bush administration, mostly from Democrats, has mounted. Critics have questioned whether the White House exaggerated the threat from Saddam to bolster the case for war with Iraq, and they say the administration was ill-prepared to tackle the task of rebuilding the country. Administration official have steadfastly rejected such charges, dismissing them as attempts to rewrite history. From a political standpoint, Gephardt's speech may have been ill-timed. It came on the same day that Saddam's sons were killed in a firefight with U.S. troops in Iraq, a development that dominated the news and likely provided a boost to the Bush administration. But Gephardt said Bush had displayed an "utter disregard for diplomacy" and suggested his approach was putting U.S. troops in harm's way in Iraq. "I'm seeking the presidency because foreign policy isn't a John Wayne movie, where we catch the bad guys, hoist a few cold ones and then everything fades to black," Gephardt said in the transcript. "Diplomacy matters. Burden-sharing matters. Follow-through matters. And yes, sustaining the peace is harder, more complex and often costlier than winning the war itself. No matter the surge of momentary machismo -- as gratifying as it may be for some -- it's short-sighted and wrong to simply go it alone." In his speech, Gephardt reiterated his support for the congressional resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, saying he believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction or components for such weapons. But, he said, that didn't give the administration license to issue what he called "carefully parsed and cleverly tailored claims" to make the case for war. "In an era when our gravest security threats are covert, when troops must be committed on the basis of scraps of intelligence, not flag-waving invasions from overseas, how can we compromise the integrity of our word?" Gephardt said. Some of his harshest comments were reserved for the administration's policy toward oil-rich Saudi Arabia. Gephardt said the administration had taken a soft approach to Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that most of the September 11, 2001 hijackers were Saudi nationals and despite what he described as evidence of Saudi citizens supporting terrorism. "This administration needs to stop behaving like the United States of Saudi Arabia and it needs to start mobilizing international pressure to get Saudi Arabia to stop funding, training and breeding global terror in the first place," Gephardt said.
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